


let the soft thing of your body love what it loves

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: David Has Clothing Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Patrick Brewer is Steady, spoilers for the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23597026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: The shoulders of the jacket fall broad and straight, the kind of strong geometric lines he loves, a simple white pocket square left in the small plastic accessory bag attached to the hanger. There’s a grosgrain piping that edges the jacket and moves the eye down the line of his chest. He pulls the cuffs over his wrists and smiles at the subtle black-and-white stripes lining the inside of the jacket, details no one may ever see but that make the coat feel less like an outfit, and more like a memory waiting to be made. He slips the skirt over his hips, smiling at himself in the mirror as the hemline falls perfectly at his knees. The lower pleat of the skirt falls behind him, grazing his calves like a whisper, and even without the white-barred socks and combat boots he’s got safely in a box at home already — it’s perfect. It’s a softening and a firmness that reminds him of rose thorns, of the way he and Patrick fit and meld to one another. He’d sat in front of his dream house and cracked his heart open and spoken about winning and in this moment, in this outfit, he feels like he’s won.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 17
Kudos: 236





	let the soft thing of your body love what it loves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyflowdi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/gifts).



> all my love to Di, who came up with this idea and basically wrote all the best parts, and who has been a true and dear friend over the last several weeks.
> 
> Thank you to [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/pseuds/this_is_not_nothing) for the original beta and [storieswelove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/pseuds/storieswelove), who worked her own particular brand of magic in helping it become something better.

David takes the outfit home on a Tuesday. He and Stevie drive all the way to Elm Glen, to the only tailor within a single day’s drive that has the kind of online reviews detailed and resoundingly positive enough for David to trust. He’d finally found his choice online, and after no small amount of heartbreak at not being able to do the actual window shopping he felt this day deserved, he’d ordered it and had it delivered to the tailor. He’d come to all his other fittings alone, but had brought Stevie to this one because, assuming everything went to plan, it’d be his last.

“Tell me again why you didn’t want Patrick to come with us.”

“Someone had to watch the store,” David says with a little shake of his head, a roll of his eyes, and if he weren’t driving he’d add a little flick of his hands to boot, just to hammer home the legitimacy of the point. Of course Patrick had to watch the store, who else was going to. There was literally no other reason for Patrick not to come with them. None at all. “Besides, Patrick’s isn’t my Maid of Honor.” 

“I’m sure you could’ve roped Jocelyn or your sister in for another afternoon of help,” she says, flicking through something on her phone. She glances at him and gives him that blood-in-the-water smile he's come to hate because it looks like an expression he'd like to borrow. “Besides, we both know it’s not like you  _ need  _ me to make this decision.”

“Well, maybe I  _ wanted  _ you there. Looks like  _ that’s  _ turning out to be a huge mistake, and thank you so much for the interrogation,” he snipes back.

“I don’t think it technically counts as an interrogation if you’ve eaten in the last twenty minutes.”

“You’d have to ask Alexis for the specifics on that.” She snorts and swallows a laugh.

They park at the tailor, and Stevie takes an immediate seat. There’s a pair of low wooden chairs just to the left of the triple mirrors that stand in the rear middle of the store, and she tucks her legs up beneath her and just stares at him. David drops his bag with her and approaches the counter, says hello to Brian and takes the bagged suit with his name hanging from the tag. The fabric feels thick and luxurious, even through the plastic, and it feels even better as it glides over his skin.

The shoulders of the jacket fall broad and straight, the kind of strong geometric lines he loves, a simple white pocket square left in the small plastic accessory bag attached to the hanger. There’s a grosgrain piping that edges the jacket and moves the eye down the line of his chest. He pulls the cuffs over his wrists and smiles at the subtle black-and-white stripes lining the inside of the jacket, details no one may ever see but that make the coat feel less like an outfit, and more like a memory waiting to be made. He slips the skirt over his hips, smiling at himself in the mirror as the hemline falls perfectly at his knees. The lower pleat of the skirt falls behind him, grazing his calves like a whisper, and even without the white-barred socks and combat boots he’s got safely in a box at home already — it’s perfect. It’s a softening and a firmness that reminds him of rose thorns, of the way he and Patrick fit and meld to one another. He’d sat in front of his dream house and cracked his heart open and spoken about winning and in this moment, in this outfit, he feels like he’s won. 

He opens the door and he doesn’t even have to ask what Stevie thinks —her eyes widen and jaw drops, and she shakes her head from left to right in a micromovement of amazement. “David, oh my god,” is all she gets out before she presses the tips of her fingers to her mouth and he does a little preening, sliding one foot behind him and bending his knees in something approximating a curtsey.

His hand is steady as he hands over the credit card, and his heart only races a little when he sees the final tally on the line above his signature. 

*

He’s so excited when he gets to Patrick’s, he’s practically vibrating with it. He leaves the garment bag in the back of the car so he’s not tempted to put it on and ruin the surprise, but the minute he nudges Patrick’s door open, the mood shifts. Patrick’s shoulders hunch and he’s on the phone with...someone official sounding, documents splayed out in front of him, brow furrowed in concentration. David picks up words like “wiring” and “inspection” and it all gives him flashbacks to before the store opened, so he tucks his feet beneath him and sits on the couch and watches Patrick. He watches the man he loves, a tangled knot of empathy and sass that David will spend the rest of his life picking apart and knitting into something soft and warm that wraps around them both. Patrick sighs heavily as he hangs up the phone, and David wants to pull the sound into his lungs like oxygen so that it becomes a part of him.

“Who knew buying a house could be so complicated, huh?” Patrick tosses the phone onto the coffee table with a clatter and sinks down next to David, nuzzling into his chest. 

“Probably literally anyone who’s ever bought a house.”

“Have I told you today how much I love you, David?”

“Hm. Three times, but it’s been at least an hour, so. I think you’re due.”

Patrick doesn’t say anything, just leans up and presses a soft kiss to the underside of David’s jaw, and David can feel it there, a lingering frustration, or anger, or sadness — a negativity that lingers on Patrick like a dust, and even if David can’t name it, he’ll always be able to feel it because he’ll always be able to feel Patrick. Part of the whole “to death do us part” thing. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” David asks, his hand tracing gentle stripes up and down Patrick’s arm. 

“No. I’m just. Who thought that between planning a wedding and buying a house, planning the wedding is turning out to be the easy part.”

David thinks back on the venue, the photos, the conversation with the caterer. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say it’s been  _ easy _ .” 

“We’re still gonna stand across from each other, suited up and rings in hand, right? Exchange vows and do the whole forever thing in front of everyone we know?”

_ Everyone we know.  _ It’s not a phrase that should set loose an avalanche inside David — he's so intimately familiar with the guest list he could recite it in his sleep — but he’s long given up trying to predict what will or won’t send the mental rocks crashing. Because the truth is — his skirted tuxedo is, well. Skirted. It’s flamboyant, and joyous, and the perfect amount of fuck-you to all forms of binaries, in true David Rose style. Plus he's been working hard on the definition in his calves and if the way Patrick looked at him the when he wore the jean skirt last week it was paying off.

But his mind latches onto the word ‘everyone’ and, like it does at all the most inconvenient times, begins to tell him that all his instincts are wrong. Not where the outfit is concerned — he knows how good he looks in that skirt — or even that he thinks Patrick will mind. But it won't be just him and Patrick, or even he and Patrick and his family. It will be  _ everyone,  _ including Patrick's family and. Maybe it will be too much for them, and Patrick as a result. Especially on a day that’s becoming more and more a safe haven for both of them, among the stress of houses and motel empires and his entire family relocating. He wonders if Patrick wouldn’t prefer him in something...simpler. And once he’s thought it, he can't unthink it. His brain drags across it like an iceberg, helpless to do anything but watch it punch holes in all his mental life rafts. 

“Yes. Yes, we are,” David says, his voice tight, his smile not reaching all the way to his eyes.

“Then it’s easy enough. Hey — do  _ you  _ want to talk about it? How was the final fitting?” 

“It was good,” he hedges, tucking a small smile onto his face, one he hopes is kind and dismissive so that they don’t have to talk about this anymore.

"And?! Come on, you're not going to let me see how handsome you're going to look on the big day?"

David rolls his eyes and presses a gentle kiss to the crest of Patrick's cheek as he stands. "Easy, smooth talker, or I'll be tempted to tell you all about the hemlines."

Patrick laughs and reaches out to squeeze David's hand as he passes. “I can’t wait to see it.”

*

David takes the tuxedo into the motel Tuesday evening and hangs it in the closet, nestled between his pile of cashmere on the left and the mohair on the right, and there it hangs through Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday.

Every time it comes up, David’s mind flies back to Patrick, to “everyone we know" and the way Patrick’s shoulders had melted away from his ears when David and promised him it really would be just that simple. David feels like maybe this is the universe’s way of tell him it had all been a waste, all his effort to go with the flow when the venue sounded like a Toddler Murder Factory, when he’d had to dip into the Brewers’ wedding nest egg to pay for the caterer and a replacement photography session. He’d rolled with the punches with what he felt like was a commendable amount of flexibility for someone who  _ still  _ hadn’t moved the lip balms. 

But now all David can think is that he’s made the wrong choice, the kind of choice that will bring the entire day crashing down around his head, because there’s being ‘a lot’ and there’s being ‘too much’ and David doesn’t know if he can handle Patrick thinking the latter about him, on what’s going to otherwise be the happiest day of his life. And then there's a part of him that's pissed for being pissed, because Patrick has never been anything but, well. Appreciative of David's skirts, and skirted pants, and literally anything David puts on his body because Patrick loves David's body, and his clothes, and has from the beginning. But he just keeps coming back to Clint, and Marci, and nameless, faceless cousins and aunts and uncles.

Maybe Patrick sees the cloud that passes over David’s face when he asks, or notices the stiffening in David’s shoulders, the little shrug of feigned indifference that pulls his shoulders to his ears at the same time that it pushes the truth deeper. Whatever clue Patrick picks up on, David knows he knows something is wrong. He knows because when he comes for dinner Wednesday, Patrick’s ordered all three of David’s favorite pizzas, and didn’t even get a salad David had to pretend to eat first. When he wakes up Thursday, he’s making David the complicated ricotta pancakes he loves, even though it’s a weekday and he had to get up at least an hour early to get them done. He’s doing all the little things that means he loves David, and he’s here to listen whenever David wants to talk, and each one is like another stitch in the string sewing David’s lips together. A few days pass, and David asks Patrick about the house, mumbles his ways through terms he’s heard Chip and Joanna Gaines say before, and truly tries to listen when Patrick answers him. 

By the time Saturday rolls around, and they have the chance to take their time with one another, pulling at the threads until the seams that build their bodies unravel at a touch, it’s all David can do not to scream at the gentle caress of Patrick’s hand, at the soft peppering of kisses across the freckles on his shoulders that send tears to his eyes and a molten heat through his belly. He feels raw, and exposed, and the worst part of it is that if he tells Patrick now, he risks feeling foolish on top of it all. 

He’s lying on his side, staring at the shelves of sweaters and button-downs that line the wall, the outer layers he and Patrick put on to face the world. He’s migrated some of his favorite sweaters here, the ones that speak to him, or about him, or represent something intangible between the knit and purl stitches. He’s even started saving himself the trouble of moving them, having the last several sweaters shipped to Patrick’s instead of to the motel. 

It’s raining outside, because of course it is, and if David had a single candle and a Smith’s album, he’d be the full and complete picture of morose. The idea makes him laugh, and the small sound worms it’s way into a crack in the dam, and suddenly David’s shoulders are shaking, silent sobs that crash on him, wave after wave. He doesn’t really think it’s about the suit anymore, or not just about the suit, and all he can see through the tears is the bottom of half of his new LOVE sweater, a rainbow of colors that blend and blur together into a tye-dye on the back of his eyelids. It seems too bright for him all of a sudden, a rainbow in the monochrome. 

“David?” Patrick’s hand has gone still, and somehow the lack of movement is even worse than the constant touching has been, and David doesn’t know  _ what  _ he needs to feel better, to stop crying, but nothing is working and he’s an absolute mess, and he doesn’t want Patrick saddled with a life of mess — Patrick, who longs for simple, for boxes and spreadsheets and a linear progression that David always feels one step behind on, because he’s still not used to it.

“I found my wedding suit,” he manages to choke out in a series of broken whispers, and Patrick hadn’t been moving but now he goes absolutely still.

“I know,” Patrick says with a little laugh on the back of his voice and he doesn’t mean it to hurt, because Patrick would never intentionally hurt David, but it slices into the softest parts of him fast and thin and so sudden it’s not bleeding yet. “I’ve been hoping you would show me.”

David sniffles wetly. “Can’t do that. Bad luck.”

“Worse luck than crying over your wedding suit?”

“I’m not. Crying. Over the suit.” David says with a little huff, as tears continue to roll down his cheeks.

“Okay,” Patrick says, his voice trailing off and creating the kind of vacancy he knows David won’t be able to keep from filling. 

“It’s just. Um. It’s not exactly a suit?” There’s a waiting silence, and David takes a deep breath, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I mean, it is. It’s a  _ gorgeous  _ suit, Thom Browne, really an avant-garde use of lines and silhou —”

“David,” Patrick says gently. “I have no doubt you’ve picked out a stunning suit to get married in.”

“It’s skirted,” David says quickly, like he’s pulling off a bandaid. And whatever expectation he’d been expecting, it’s not the one he gets, which is a shame because it’s the one he should have known by now he can count in. “The bottom. It’s. I’m wearing a skirt to our wedding.

“Okay...” Patrick says it like he's waiting for more to the story and David feels like maybe he's not actually speaking English because he doesn't understand why Patrick can't see what he's saying.

“A skirt, Patrick. Hemmed at the knees. I'm going to hold a bouquet of flowers and walk towards you and your father...in a skirt.” David takes a deep breath and tries to marshall his thoughts into order. It’s been so long since he’s cried — since he’s been with Patrick, he hasn’t had need to, not like this. Like a living thing inside him has taken control and is clawing its way out of the darkest parts of David. It’s a haunting feeling, one he remembers from New York, from men and women like Sebastien, and it has no place here in this life he’s building with Patrick. At the same time, with every tear that falls, David feels a spark of lightness settle under his skin.

“David, is this what’s been bothering you? I’ve seen you in skirts before. You wore one like, literally a week ago, and I'm pretty sure I made it very clear at the time how much I liked it.” There's a heat in his voice that wraps around David's inside like a blanket.

“That wasn't. I mean, thank you. But that wasn't like this. That wasn't in front of your family, some of whom I've never  _ met,  _ on the day that’s the start of forever.” David pulls into himself and wants to disappear into the mattress. Patrick’s hand continues its steady, tracing rhythm, and paired with the droning of steady rain and the muted glow of the streetlamp through the window, it’s almost enough to lull him to sleep. So much so that he starts when Patrick’s voice cuts through the air between them.

“Do  _ you  _ like it?” David opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He doesn’t just like it. He  _ loves  _ it. For reasons he hasn’t quite figured out how to articulate yet, so instead he presses his lips together and nods. “Then you wear it. “David, forever started the day you left me nine stoned voicemails and still came in to see me the same day. I don’t care  _ what _ you wear to get married. I just want to marry you. Plus I’ll never pass up the chance to see your knees, and a skirt probably beats those ripped black jeans I love.”

“Weird,” David says and laughs, feeling the storm break and the waters start to calm.

Patrick presses a kiss to the back of David’s neck. “Maybe. But. It’s true. And it’s simple as that, for me.”

David feels the truth in what he says, and lets it settle over him like a blanket. He should leave it at that but he’s never been one to know when to leave the box closed. “What if everyone in your family hates it?”

“My mother couldn’t hate you if you tried, and besides. I’m not marrying them. I’m marrying you. You are my family now, David.”

David’s inhale is sharp and small, and on the exhale he manages to force out an, “I love you, too,” without breaking into a fresh round of sobs.

David Rose is just starting to really learn what family means, he thinks, but he’s incredibly grateful to a life that has led him to a partner like Patrick to learn with. 


End file.
